NTM - New Tribes Mission | Planting Tribal Churches

Looking around the world to the areas where the Gospel has not yet gone, reminds me of a nine island survey in the Philippines that a coworker and I did a while back. This trip really wasn’t work, it was more like a tropical isles vacation…we’ll, maybe not quite.

We began with an hour jet flight to from Manila to the capital city of Palawan. Climbed on motorcycles for 4 days,

4 Days in the 'Saddle'

Then we took another flight on a 19 ‘seater’ inter-island plane to Cuyo Island,

Love that hummm...

Next we transferred our packs onto an 8 hp diesel engine ‘pumpboat’ (which was our ride for the next 7 days).

And then, made a two hour trip to the first island.

Incredible beautiful beaches and tropical vegetation

Everyday we piled into this boat and traveled to one small island after another. What were we looking for? People who are part of the Agutaynen ethnic group.

Also, the island leaders — Barrio Captains, and their counsel members to find out:

How many people lived there? (From 300 to 4,000 people, totaling over 10,000 in all.) What language do they speak? (85% speak Agutaynen.)

Is the Word of God being taught? (Only 1 island had someone teaching the Word.) What are their needs? (Clean drinking water, health centers, 1 room school building, etc.) Can we build an airstrip on this island? (Some, yes. Some, no.)

Would they like for NTM to send missionaries to live with them? (Yes, every island!) So what are we waiting for? Workers!!!

There was no plane from Cuyo back to Puerto, so sailed for 17 hours on a small ship with 230 other passengers.

Praise the Lord for: giving us grace with the people we met, motorcycles, boats, planes for each leg of the trip, safety in all our travels, giving us a glimpse of what He is wanting to do among this people group. Pray for the Lord to:

* Raise up a church planting team of 3 families (2 Bible teachers and 1 community developer) to reach the Agutaynen people on these 9 islands.
* Provide the resources for helping the villages/islands with their physical needs to facilitate building relationships with the people.
* Give wisdom in how to address the cultural issues in conflict with the Gospel among the Agutaynen.

Thank you for your faithful partnership in seeing the unreached ethnic groups of the Philippines and Asia hear the Gospel of grace.

This entry was posted on Monday, March 29th, 2010 at 5:34 pm and is filed under Ministry. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.